I met Becky about three years ago. One of the families that has a son in my daughter’s grade has both the resources and wherewithal to hire English speaking au pairs, young women (usually) that are like foreign nannies. Becky was the third au pair of theirs that I met. I always made a point of introducing myself to them, if only to give them a brief respite from the barrage of Spanish. Some, like Becky, knew quite a bit of Spanish already, and others came with nothing.

The school year was almost over when I first learned that Becky played the violin. I didn’t think much more of it. For some reason that is beyond me, she decided to spend yet another year of her vital youth in small town Spain, and she came back for a second school year.(more…)

Last night, my sleepy little fishing village, population seven thousand, managed to scrape together enough tax funds1 to afford to provide a free concert by two-time Latin Grammy Award winning artist, Rosario Flores. I became aware of her in 2002, shortly after dropping all my things and moving to England to live with my future wife, when our mutual flatmate, a Spanish girl, brought back a Rosario CD, Muchas Flores (one of her Grammy wins), from Spain. She also is a member of the elite group of five or six of artists for whom we have CDs that live in the glove box of our car, so over the years, I have learned some of her songs.(more…)

Every year my children’s daycare surprises me with a clever costume duo for the grown-ups and the children, e.g. Angels and Demons, Cops and Robbers, Snow White and Dwarves. This year, it was pirates for the grown-ups, and parrots for the children. Not the cleverest they’ve done, but not bad, and way cleverer than the other schools in town, some of whom were Ninja Turtles, [Despicable Me] Minions, dinosaurs, or Smurfs (Smurves?), with the parents and children dressing up as the same thing…yawn! As usual, I was designated the official daycare photographer, although this year I was not given a special costume as I have been in the past as Prince Charming or the Police Commissioner.(more…)

Due to a lucky bit of childlessness this weekend, my wife and I were finally able to try the best restaurant in town, which opened less than a year ago, I think. It’s a place called Tarkarí. The name comes from an Indian curry, the chef is Venezuelan, but the food is Italian, although perhaps the chef might prefer the word “fusion”. The logo proclaims “gastroart”, and the logo looks like it was drawn by my one year old son; how delightfully pretentious! The chef explained to me that the vegetable curry called tarkari was introduced to the Caribbean during British occupation, eventually made its way from the islands to Venezuela, and somewhere along the way baby goat was added to make the, now typical, Venezuelan dish called tarkarí de chivo. Perhaps it’s this cultural culinary fusion that lead the chef to name his restaurant after it. Plus, it’s a pretty cool word.(more…)

As I do most mornings, weather permitting, I took my son for a 2-3 km walk around the port and tidal bay of the little fishing village we call home. Today the tide was high, and the water was particularly calm, which made the walk extremely photogenic. I really wished that I had my proper DSLR camera with me, but I thought I’d give the iPhone 6 camera a chance to shine. It definitely held its own. Most of these were full scenes that I wished I could zoom and frame, that I have just cropped afterwards. Even so, the picture quality is impressive. Come take my morning walk with me.(more…)

After my impressive performance her first year, for the last two years of Nora’s daycare, I was ordained the official daycare photographer for the Carnival parade, where all the kids and parents (from all the daycares and preschools) dress up and parade around town. Since I was out of town for last year (it rained, anyway), and Ian hadn’t yet shown his face, this was the first year that I had ties to both the local school and to the daycare. Several months ago, the daycare boss, Adela, approached me and said, “We can count on you as photographer again this year, right?” I said, well…since I’ve got Nora in school, I’m not sure which group I should participate with. She said, “But you’re dressing up with us, right?” I said, “Well, that depends…Nora’s class is dressing up as bees, which is pretty cute. What is your costume?” She explained that the kids were going to dress up as cops, and the parents as prisoners. I was sold immediately. She always has the most creative ideas, like when the grown-ups were angels and the kids demons.(more…)

Last Sunday was the annual Cocido Montañes in the Park day here in Colindres. Every year, around the summer solstice, the Peña San Juan (Saint John’s Club), named after the town’s patron saint, throws a huge cookout in the local park. They make a Cantabrian specialty, known as cocido montañes, which is a white bean and spinach soup with pieces of meat in it. Each serving contains a pork rib, a piece of chorizo, and a piece of morcilla (blood sausage). Over the eight years we have been attending the festival, it has been evolving and improving. When we first went, you waited in line and then asked for as many servings as you wanted and paid 1€ each. So some groups of four would order eight servings to have leftovers later that week. But it was hard to calculate just how much to make.(more…)

For the first time all year, we’ve had sunny weather with blue sky. Except that we’ve had a big cloud of smoke over our town for those two days. There has been a controlled burning of a forest on a nearby hill. It’s a favorite forest of mine, because it’s where the sun and moon first appear on the horizon during the winter months. Luckily the smoke has stayed high above the town, but today I noticed that all the cars were covered in a light dusting of ash.(more…)

It’s really hard to believe, but my daughter is already finishing her first school year. Like in the States, school isn’t mandatory until age six, but study after study shows nothing but advantages of a good preschool education. For a post she’s preparing, my blogrollmate, the very popular Kaley, from Y Mucho Más, asked me for an interview about my experiences in the Spanish education system. Her questions were excellent, and it felt sort of like an exit interview after this first year.(more…)

Today we had some wonderful weather, and I grabbed my camera as we were leaving for our usual afternoon walk around town. In May, seven o’clock in the afternoon is well before Golden Hour, but the visibility was good and I managed to capture a few good shutter clicks. A few of them just begged to be tilt-shifted, to highlight the subject of the photo. When Photoshop beckons, I go running…(more…)